Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion comes under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. This department is responsible for formulation and implementation of promotional and developmental measures for growth of the industrial sector, keeping in view the national priorities and socio-economic objectives. They have identifies 8 problem statements for Smart India Hackathon 2017.

A 24*7 live chat feature needs to be enabled and integrated with the Startup India web portal and mobile app. The live chat functionality should connect entrepreneurs, incubators, VCs, angel investors etc. with policy makers, IT support providers, consulting teams etc. for efficient resolution of queries and efficient mitigation of procedural challenges.

An app should enable latest updates and notifications for all policy changes, new initiatives, news, schemes launched etc. within the startup ecosystem. The app should adhere to the following:

It should not provide a simple integration of RSS feeds but rather utilise the Web Crawler for more efficient indexing and ‘web spidering’ of keywords related to startups. This would ensure no relevant article/link is missed by the app user

The alerts provided should also be categorised appropriately as social media links, news articles, government notifications, startup stories, learning material etc.

The first version of the Startup India mobile app is already underway, but with constant activity within the start-up ecosystem, a more refined version needs to be brought out. Technical entrepreneurs need to explore on what functionalities the app should be upgraded with, to make it a simple, one-stop solution for all important material relevant to Startup India.

While Tier-I cities and to a large extent, Tier-II cities also have a reasonable level of awareness of ‘Startup India’ initiative, Tier-III cities have a long way to go in matching up to a similar level. Citizens from these cities need to be trained, made aware of schemes and facilities and provided with platforms to encourage the growth of startups. An app, fulfilling the above requirements, that helps ‘Startup India’ reach Tier-III cities needs to be designed.

Design an app that helps connect artisans, trainers, producers etc. with the relevant startups who can provide marketplace for products and other solutions/services. The industries to be catered to should be the following: